Department of Alchemy 4-273

Note: If you are here following the link from the Berkman@10 homepage, please check out the rest of my blog for other articles related to the conference.

Finals probably hit me at the worst possible point in May. Well, at a good point, because I had a very relaxing respite from academics as well as conferences. However, I planned that respite to be my time to write more about Anime Boston, and to begin formulating articles about ROFLCon and the multiple lectures I’ve attended at MIT and Harvard over the past month. Instead, I studied hard and long, neglecting any urges to write, and now I’m sitting in the middle of Berkman@10, fretting in my seat because I want to write so much about some of the things I’ve heard this morning, but so much of it relates to items that I wanted to bring up in discussing the lectures and ROFLCon and… I suppose my approach might have to be melding everything together, although my productions will be much more disjointed than I had hoped.

To discuss at least one thing that I felt I needed to say, regarding liveblogging. Last night I attended a pre-conference event at the Harvard Kennedy School, entitled Civic Engagement and the Youth Vote in the 2008 Elections, hosted by the Berkman Center collaborating with the Institute of Politics. I won’t discuss the content of the panel discussion, but I want to point out that when I was sitting with my laptop taking notes, a woman from the Berkman Center was sitting right next to me, typing away into WordPress, liveblogging the event (the results of which you can read here).

In the interim between talks this morning, I met Andrew Sellars, who recently graduated from Northeastern University. We talked a lot about how we became interested in attending the event, the dichotomy between paying attention and multitasking, and eventually discussed how to approach the conference with its advertisement of so many social tools to use during the discussion. I bought up liveblogging and we both agreed that the method is at least a bit moot (you’ll see his liveblogs over at his website, /irony/), since the liveblogger never gets the opportunity to simply sit back and take in everything, to breathe the content, to turn it over and finds its gaps, to discover where it succeeds. I’ve discussed my one attempt at liveblogging, and I just didn’t get anything out of it. I want to be able to comprehend the content. So, in my frenzy to continue debating the issues and values at Berkman@10, as well as include everything that I’ve wanted to talk about for the past month… wait. It’s coming. I may have to type away the inked letters on my keyboard for the next three weeks though.

And, of note:
- I finally met, in person, Diana Kimball, who I really blame for starting me on this whole adventure. Hey, she writes well.
- Where do I get one of these Berkman 10 track jackets???